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There is a species of butterfly that lives in the mountains.

When it hatches as a caterpillar, it lowers itself to the ground on a strand of silk, and then produces a chemical that smells like the larvae of ants. An ant eventually discovers it, lured by the scent, and brings it back to the anthill, where it is cared for by the colony until it pupates. After a few weeks, the adult butterfly crawls back up through the anthill, through the dirt and the winding tunnels, and out into the sunlight before it can finally open its wings.

Some say that the caterpillar “tricks” the ants into doing this. I don’t know if I agree – I think it’s too small a thing to accuse of guile, don’t you?

With this in mind: Once upon a time, there were seven dwarves.

They lived and worked in the mountains, mining for gold and jewels and precious things. And one night, after a long day’s labour, they heard a knocking at the great stone doors of their mountain.

Outside, shivering and small, they found a human child.

I’m sure you can guess most of what she told them. Stepmothers were involved – it’s not important. What’s important was that each of the dwarves felt a dire and pressing need to care for the child, and they took her into their home, fed her, clothed her, and gave her a warm bed to sleep in. And many seasons passed around that mountain, with the dwarves raising the child as one of their own, until one autumn’s day.

The girl laid, slender and still, in a coffin of spun glass. And some weeks later, one of the dwarves had the idea to call for a prince. This was of course the sensible thing to do, and the prince of a nearby kingdom who listened to the story thought an ensorcelled girl would be a grand thing to rescue.

Poor devils. It feels cruel to judge them. But there were so many questions they could’ve asked – what was this stepmother’s name? Was she real? Did she exist? Who had made the glass coffin? Surely one of them must’ve thought of the question. And why did it grow more opaque with every passing day?

Were they wrong to trust?

I guess it doesn’t matter now.

The moment the prince stepped into the subterranean chamber with the glass coffin, it shivered with a twinkling, plinking noise. Threads of glass exploded into glittering, razor-edged confetti.

A claw split the great glass cocoon.

The thing that spilled out of it, hulking and huge, knew in the fog of its mind, in a base animal sense that screamed, that it was in a room too small for it to fit. It wanted up. It wanted out.

In front of it was some twiggy little thing holding a sword.

It took its first breath.

The flames were the colour of cornflowers.

The dwarves fled. The thing followed close behind, up, up, up through the stone and the winding tunnels, not to chase, not to hunt, but to get up, to get out, out, out–

It struck the great stone doors at a run. They crumbled like gingerbread. And then there was sunlight, and the open sky…

And it could finally open its wings.

Convergent evolution is a hell of a thing.

The dragon, of course, lived happily ever after with its loot of gold and jewels from a hastily abandoned dwarf mine. Being much bigger than a caterpillar, we could accuse it of tricking the dwarves who were kind to it, had taken it in, had fed and clothed and warmed it.

It probably wouldn't mind.

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I’m going to be starting a new job soon and in my talk with HR she went “Computer tech? That means you’ll be with the boys.”

Turns out, I’m gonna be the only woman in that department. Not surprising on it’s own, but so far I’ve met three of “the boys”.

They’re all huge.

[cpt-glasses]

just learned about farming simulator

I mean, I already knew about it, but I just learned about it

Did you know that the target audience for Farming Simulator is actual real-world farmers? Because I didn’t. I just assumed that farmers probably don’t want to go home from a day of farming to do some (presumably highly inaccurate) virtual farming?

Like, imagine if the target audience for Power Washing Simulator was actual professional power washers.

Farming Sim gets sponsored by companies and shit to put ads in their games. But since the game is for farmers, all of the ads target farmers. Advertising products that, realistically, only farmers would be interested in. Aka John Deere tractors and shit.

There’s a fucking farming sim esports league. Where do they play? Agriculture conventions. not gaming conventions. agriculture conventions.

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has anyone done a board game about like competative tumblr/twitter/instagram social justice cancellations?

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ID: a sketchy two page comic of my tortoiseshell kittens, Maggie and Bunny.

From off panel, I hold my hands out to Maggie, who leans away

Me: Aw, Maggie doesn’t wanna come up?

Maggie: Mother I am not a child.

Me: You’re ten months old.

Maggie: I am a warrior.

Bunny pops up from behind her sister.

Bunny: I’m not! I’m baby <3

I scoop Bunny up while Maggie watches in shock and confusion.

Me: Aw, yes you are, Bunny. Who’s my sweet baby?

Maggie flops on her back and shows her tummy. She has big blobby tears in her eyes.

Maggie: Mommy??? Betrayal?? You abandon your baby?? Your Darling Girl?? Your little Maggie-Pie?!?

End ID.

Maggie is a strong, independant kitten, so long as you never pay attention to anyone else, ever.

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bitch…omg

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please watch this raw, unedited 2 minute clip from Bill Nye the Science Guy (1995) it is on some next level shit that is so far ahead of its time 

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In the D&D campaign I'm running with my wife's siblings, one of them learned about how trolls regenerate within minutes of any damage not caused by fire or acid, and then asked why people don't just like. Cage them and eat them, forever. Why there aren't troll meat dungeons in the king's castle as a safeguard against sieges or famines.

And you know, I thought it was a fair question, so I said that if you eat enough troll meat, you start getting troll-y. And then I went further and just treated it like troll flesh is a general contaminant - if you eat enough troll, you'll turn into a troll, but if you bury enough dead troll flesh in a forest, the trees will start growing in strange ways, and will scream and heal and bleed when you hit them with axes.

I liked this idea. So as we played further, I just played around with the idea of Troll Origins, and I came up with something sort of like the Odyssey, but instead stealing Helios's cattle, it was Hathor's, and the horrible, awful, unending immortality was her curse of the army that pillaged her lands. A god of healing does not condemn you to die, she condemns you to live.

And then I got this fun idea for maybe the king that led the army is still kind of alive in the troll taint. Like a sort of literal fisher king. The kingdom is sick because he is, literally, the kingdom. The trees that bleed, bleed his blood and their screams are his screams. He is both the faintly green bear running down the mountain and the faintly green deer and there is no way past this without suffering. He is the entire ecosystem, and he eats nothing but himself and he dreams nothing but death and yet still, on and on and on and on, he lives.

Anyway they're traveling next session so I'm throwing this shit at them. I already have some gross ideas for like. Describing everything like it's a body (flowers red as blood, white as bone, pink as meat, grass fine as hair) then finally throwing horrible living things at them. Trees that grow eyeballs that turn and stare at them, or flowers with teeth instead of petals and trolls that speak in long dead tongues about how they wish they'd never tried to rob a god.

Anyway I'm passing this on because this is my new troll lore and I want it to become canonized in the way that all D&D lore becomes canonized: By having eople read it and go "oh, neat" then start doing that too.

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holy shit my coworker just gave me a heart attack

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people are so mean about horror movie victims like. sorry but if i had gone to a cabin in the woods with my friends as a teenager you couldn't have stopped us from reading aloud from the evil tome. how were they supposed to know the ancient curse was real they're like 17

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Everyone is so weird about people who cry easily. Fellas, is it evil and manipulative to *checks notes* have an involuntary stress response?

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Why do all the beautiful, colorful vintage bathrooms end up in the wrong hands. Come here. I would treasure you

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me if i lived in castle times: i like my women like i like my ale.....stout! gyahahaha!

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guy accidentally cures his own road rage by making fun of the person who caused his road rage